LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM HOVERS OVER AMERICA

LOW PRESSURE SYSTEM HOVERS OVER AMERICA

By Pastor Chuck Baldwin

April 28, 2006

NewsWithViews.com

An upcoming birthday reminds me that I have lived to pass the half-century mark. During those years, I have seen people at their best and at their worst. I believe I am also witnessing the impact that a vast cultural revolution is having on people.

There is always an ebb and flow to people's lives and to the life of a nation, for that matter. However, if I were to report on the general state of people's lives today in meteorological terms, I would say a ubiquitous low pressure system envelops the entire country.

By low pressure I mean the daily emotional, psychological, mental, and spiritual stress brought to bear upon people. In fact, it seems that the stress (low pressure) with which people are daily engulfed these days could be categorized as a hurricane of Category 5 proportions! I've never seen anything like it!

For the most part, family life is as turbulent as ocean waves in the midst of a storm. In fact, stormy would be a very descriptive word for most modern families.

Pervasive divorce has alienated children from parents and parents from children. Children seldom have the luxury of growing up with biological parents, much less grandparents. Fathers are seldom the disciplinarians at home. Before the average American child is a teenager, he or she has become thoroughly spoiled, selfish, and sinful. Furthermore, the lust for material prosperity seems to burn far stronger in the average parent's heart than the desire to teach and train their own offspring!

Add to family stress vocational and economic uncertainty. How many people across our once great land clocked out on Friday evening only to return Monday morning to a job site with empty buildings and locked gates? How many have seen their pensions and insurance plans disappear overnight? How many have worked their whole lives for a company only to have the management abruptly say, "Sorry, we're moving to Mexico. You're on your own"?

Then, of course, there is the heavy spiritual stress that people of faith, especially Christians, are currently subjected to as their country's institutions (at every level and at every turn) are progressively intolerant and hostile to their values. How many people have lost jobs or promotions because of a perceived "politically incorrect" (but Biblically sound) point of view? How many Christian children in our public schools are ridiculed, scorned, and humiliated by teachers and professors because they will not submit their hearts and minds to godless evolution and other humanistic philosophies? How many churches are staggering under the burden of restrictive and punitive rules and regulations which serve only to choke the life out of spiritual service and commitment?

However, Americans of every generation have faced, fought, and defeated these kinds of enemies for over 300 years. Yet, it seems to me that something much different is in the air today. The stress to which I allude is much deeper, much more sinister, and much more prevalent than anything this nation has ever faced before.

It seems to me that people of faith in America are now at the same place that the Pilgrims were at back in Europe in the 1600's. Those people were enduring such intolerable circumstances that they had to make drastic decisions: Do we stay and endure increasing hostility, resentment, and even persecution, or do we move to another land in search of peace and freedom?

I was speaking to a missionary from Central America recently, and he told me, "Chuck, you would not believe how many Americans (especially Christians) are moving to Central America. They have had it." He further said, "And Chuck, you might be surprised to learn that for the most part, they are finding more peace and more freedom than they had in the States."

Has it come to that? Has it come to the time in America when Christian people must again entertain the idea of becoming pilgrims? Perhaps it has.

Remember that America was born in the spirit of Christian revival. The Protestant Reformation in Europe and the Great Awakenings in America gave birth to this land of liberty. However, America rejected the faith of our fathers long ago. Multiculturalism is the new national religion in America. Wealth and power is our new god. We have lost our Christian culture and our national identity.

Furthermore, America has lost its borders and is fast losing its language. Politicians from both parties are about as corrupt, contemptible, and criminal as they can possibly be. And the greed and corruption within big business staggers the imagination and strains the conscience. I tell you the truth, it's getting harder and harder to tell the difference between the good guys and the bad guys, and that includes our religious leaders!

Remember, the reason the Pilgrims came to America was two-fold: to find a quiet and peaceful place in which to raise Christian children and to find a place where they could freely proclaim the Word of God. Both opportunities are quickly disappearing in America! And, personally, the only light I see at the end of the tunnel is the light of an oncoming train!

One thing is certain: God can (and will) accomplish His will in the world with or without the help of the United States. God doesn't need America; America needs God! And if God wants to disperse the Christians of America into a world more eager to receive the truth of His Word, He is certainly able to do it. After all, England was once a hot-bed of revival and evangelism, and now it is as dead as four o'clock in the morning, spiritually. The same thing could happen here.

Yes, America has certainly changed during my fifty plus years of living, mostly for the worse. However, it is not up to us to judge these matters, is it? As John Quincy Adams put it, "Duty is ours; results are God's." Indeed. It is enough to simply know one's duty. For the Pilgrims, duty meant leaving Europe and coming to America. For the colonial patriots, duty meant fighting for independence. What will duty mean for us? We shall see.

© 2006 Chuck Baldwin - All Rights Reserved

Three Threats to Freedom

Three Threats to Freedom
by John Loeffler World Affairs Editor

"This is America. That can't happen here." It's a popular phrase among Christians who have been warned about the rapidly deteriorating protections in this country and the possibility of oncoming persecution. In Jeremiah's time, the Israelites chanted a similar mantra: "The temple of the Lord, the temple of the Lord."1 This was the narcotic which allowed them to ignore Jeremiah's warning of imminent destruction. After all, the Lord's temple was among them, therefore God would never allow Jerusalem to be destroyed. They gambled on that and lost. American Christians are gambling at the same table. Same game, different century.

Since the early 1960s, America has undergone a series of radical cultural changes. We experienced the civil rights movement and made great strides in overturning the history of racism in this country. Spurred on by that and the flower child revolution, which rejected the established order and sought its own brand of freedom, Americans began to imagine they had all sorts of rights and commenced a decades-long battle to obtain them, oftentimes warping the very fabric of the Constitution to do it. At the same time, America began its rejection of God and launched into a new hedonism. We began new discrimination by giving preferential treatment in public life to a plethora of groups, excluding others. We began a failed crusade to eliminate poverty by spending money. Schools began operating as psycho-centers, where personality would be shaped rather than minds educated. There was a pronounced shift to untested experimental programs, away from having schools represent parents to teaching children to think "independently" and replace the values of their parents with secular ones.

The product of that era is now evident in a soaring poverty rate, a national budget gone bankrupt, and an illiterate populace that is both ignorant of its history and atheistic, being controlled by a government no longer accountable to its people, circling the wagons to defend itself from its failing policies with a continual stream of lies.

The Christian Right, meanwhile, has spent the past few decades battling the sociological results of the 1960s worldview changes rather than the causes, arriving on the scene over two decades late, a dollar short and agreeing to play by the other side's rules, guaranteeing eventual failure.

There is now a more radical paradigm change to global pantheism underway. This movement is hostile to Christianity and, once again, the Church is ignoring it. Last time around the church was allowed to do its thing as long as it didn't get in the way. This time will be different. The new paradigm has all intents and purpose of forcing its pantheistic will on Christianity in the name of tolerance.

America's Challenge

For that to happen, the rights which protected our culture for 200 years have to be swept away. The new paradigm hates inalienable rights and insists on defining new ones, while appealing to popular consensus for their validation. If just a few more changes occur in the way laws are defined, enforced, and relate to each other, we will have very little freedom left. This loss will directly impact the American church, soft after 200 years of good living and incapable of envisioning itself under persecution.

The First Amendment guarantees freedom of speech and religion. But now religion can't be practiced on many occasions. We now have freedom from religion. Speech may be technically free, but those who say politically incorrect things are ridiculed, called purveyors of hate, and excluded from public discourse. The chief no tolerance for free speech zone in America today is found in academia and government circles.

In creating the Second Amendment, the founding fathers recognized that as long as there was an armed populace, a government could not arbitrarily force its dictatorial will on the people. Although the right to bear arms was not to be infringed, there are now over 20,000 laws controlling or prohibiting arms.

The Fourth Amendment is for all purposes dead, and with it the property rights so essential to a stable society. Seizures of property due to a plethora of laws and regulations are commonplace. Now if the government wants it, charges can be trumped and the property taken, often without trial. Just imagine what will happen if "hate speech" laws ever link up with forfeiture statutes. People will be afraid to speak for fear of having their property seized.

The Fifth Amendment, with its protection against double jeopardy, is buckling badly. The reason for this provision was to prevent government from endless charging and recharging of a person until his resources were exhausted. But now we can be punished for the same crime in several ways, at both federal and state levels, and by having property seized or by means of other "civil" procedures.

The Tenth Amendment, wherein all powers not specifically designated to the federal government are reserved to the states and the people is worse than dead; it's rotting. The federal government has entered areas never specifically designated to it and the states, rather than asserting their legal rights, pant for handouts from the federal trough and are willing to prostitute themselves to obtain them.

Threat #1: International Treaties

There are several end-runs which are also endangering what remains of constitutional protections. The first great end-run is the signing and ratification of international treaties, which become the law of our land. Most of these treaties originate at United Nations conferences. The UN is a nondemocratic organization, which makes no secret about its love of socialism and its goal of bringing the planet under its "global governance." At the recent UN conference in Istanbul, Turkey, it was Fidel Castro who got a standing ovation after making a speech trouncing the U.S. Red flag waving, anyone?

The treaties have language which is intentionally broad and vague, having one meaning to the people drafting them but another to the public. They are debated in the public arena by means of clichés and face merit, rather than on the legalese they actually contain and how the language will be enforced. Much of the U.S.'s sovereignty is being deeded away to international organizations who have no understanding of rights or protections as we understand them. Current pending treaties will deed away control of our children, river beds, the oceans, and property rights, among other things.

Threat #2: Regulation

Congress has defaulted much of its responsibility for making laws to a fourth branch of government not sanctioned by the Constitution -the Bureaucratic Branch. Congress passes laws creating agencies and enables those agencies to create "regulations," which are then imposed on the populace with the force of law. As Congress defaults on its responsibilities, the agencies are now acting as unaccountable lawmakers, imposing more and more regulation. Enforcement of these regulations is becoming equally abusive and the process of redress along with it.

If the Senate doesn't ratify the Kyoto Treaty on Global Warming, President Clinton has already said he's going to instruct the EPA to implement regulations which would impose the treaty on Americans anyway. End-run and TOUCHDOWN! The Senate's participation is immaterial. Congress is rapidly becoming a useless debating society as it fails to assert its right as a branch of government.

Threat #3: Executive Orders

Executive order was the means by which Germany was converted from a Republic into a Nazi dictatorship in just three months. Executive Orders are issued by the president and appear in the Federal Register for 30 days. If there is no challenge by Congress, the order then becomes law. Similar to EOs are Presidential Decision Directives, such as the secret PDD25, which allows for the use of U.S. troops in UN operations without congressional approval-in violation of the Constitution.

There have been thousands of executive orders written by presidents since the 1940s. Most of these consist of administrative housekeeping. However, a few orders involve much more than the efficient management of the nation. They virtually suspend constitutional rights and provide dictatorial powers to the executive branch of the government in a time of real or contrived emergency. There is no provision for how long a state of emergency can last.

If the president were to declare an emergency, for whatever reason, Congress's consent isn't required. Executive orders give the government the power to act as an unaccountable dictatorship. In addition, authority does not flow from the president to the governors of the various states during the emergency, but rather through the director of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and his regional directors. The states are totally bypassed.

Executive Order 10995 empowers the government to take over all communications media: radio, television, newspapers, magazines, CB, HAM, short wave, telephones, satellite and the Internet. The First Amendment would be suspended.
Executive Order 10997 allows the government to control all electric power, petroleum, gas, fuel and minerals.
Executive Order 10998 gives government control of food and farm production.
Executive Orders 10999, 11003, and 11005 control transportation, including private automobiles, highways, waterways, rail lines, airports and public storage facilities. Government can seize any vehicle.
Executive Order 11001 allows for the seizure of health, education, and welfare functions, including hospitals, pharmaceuticals, and schools.
Executive Orders 11000, 11002 and 11004, perhaps most disturbing of all, provide for the registration and relocation of individuals as the government sees fit, including separation of families based on the perceived needs in dealing with a declared crisis. These orders also provide for the seizure of housing and the establishment of new public housing to accommodate this relocated work force.
Quo Vadis America?

Twenty years ago, evangelical philosopher Francis Schaeffer warned that America's turning from God and embracing relative truths could have no other result but to convert America into a dictatorship within a generation or so.

A free society depends on voluntary compliance with law. Christians comply because they believe in a God who watches our every move and holds us accountable, even when government does not. Those without belief in God and absolute truth have no motivation whatsoever to comply voluntarily and so an ever-increasing corpus of law must be imposed by violence on citizens by government to achieve order. In doing so, the government separates itself from morality and oftentimes can become the chief lawbreaker.

The tragedy is that the Church is so desperately slow to recognize this. Despite the decay of the very wall that protects them, she repeats over and over again, "This is America, it can't happen here." Same game. Different century.

This article was originally published in the
March 1998 Personal Update NewsJournal.

The Twilight’s Last Gleaming?

The Twilight’s Last Gleaming?
by Chuck Missler

Where Is America in Biblical Prophecy?

The Lord prophesied that before His return a Fourth Kingdom would arise, often referred to as ''the revived Roman Empire,'' that would crush and rule over all the other kingdoms of the earth (Daniel 7:23). In more common terms, this implies a global, one-world government will someday exercise total sovereignty over virtually all of the people and nations of the earth. This suggests that America will eventually surrender its own national sovereignty and submit to the power, authority, and dominion of the coming Fourth Kingdom. Furthermore, there are many who ask, ''Why hasn’t God judged America?''

Billy Graham’s memorable quip several decades ago pointed out, ''If God doesn’t judge America, He will have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah!''

Thomas Jefferson expressed the same idea in 1781 when he opined, ''I tremble for my country when I recall that God is just, and His justice will not sleep forever.''

There are, at present, at least four emerging challenges to America: 1) Ezekiel 39:6, which hints at a nuclear exchange; 2) Al Qaeda, with its ''American Hiroshima''; 3) Iran, and its EMP threat; and 4) The collapse of the U.S. economy. It is this last one that is not widely understood.

Bretton Woods and Its Betrayal

The U.S. had positioned itself with this in mind before the war because it was known that America would end up supplying its allies with provisions, weapons, and thousands of other items during WW II, with the only acceptable form of payment being gold. Thus, the U.S. had accumulated a significant portion of the world’s gold by the conclusion of the war.

The Bretton Woods agreement worked well until the guns-and-butter policy of the 1960s was instituted and the money supply was expanded as never before to finance the Vietnam War and Lyndon Johnson’s ''Great Society'' programs.

Crisis and Repudiation

A dollar crisis erupted in 1970-1971 when foreign central banks, who had been flooded with dollars funding U.S. deficits, began to demand payment for their dollars in gold according to the Bretton Woods agreement. The U.S. had printed so many dollars and borrowed so much money from foreign banks that U.S. gold reserves were rendered insufficient (by a ratio of over five to one!), making full payment in gold impossible. The crisis required an immediate solution to save America from default and bankruptcy.

The U.S. resorted to immediately severing the link between the dollar and gold, making it abundantly clear to all its creditors that America would never repay any of the billions of dollars it had borrowed with physical gold, so the depreciating paper dollars were then backed by nothing but the ''reputation'' of the U.S. Government.

The act of severing this link was functionally equivalent to an act of bankruptcy by the U.S. Government. However, because of its economic, political, and military power, no government on earth could oppose this action as they had no viable alternative. They were literally forced to continue accepting depreciating dollars in payment for their goods and services sold to America.

In order to ensure that the world had an economic reason to continue holding dollars, America made an agreement with Saudi Arabia wherein the Saudis would accept only U.S. dollars as payment for their oil. With this move the dollar suddenly became backed by the one commodity every nation had to have to survive: OIL! In order to buy oil one would have to own dollars to pay for it. Even though the dollar could no longer be exchanged for gold, it was now exchangeable for Black Gold: oil.

In exchange for accepting only U.S. dollars, America agreed to support the power and position of the House of Saud and to protect them if they were ever attacked by one of their neighbors. This guarantee was fulfilled when Saddam attacked Kuwait and threatened to attack Saudi Arabia in 1991. In the ensuing years world demand for oil continued to increase, and so did the demand for dollars, forcing foreign governments all over the world to accumulate increasing amounts of dollars in order to purchase their oil. Over time, world markets evolved to the point where other commodities such as wheat, corn, soybeans, natural gas, gold, silver, and many others were all traded in dollars. Thus, the position of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency was firmly established, as was the requirement of foreign central banks to accumulate dollars to pay for all these commodities purchased on the world market.

With this system firmly in place the U.S. could then print and borrow as much money as was needed without regard to any budget discipline whatsoever. As long as the dollar was the only acceptable means of payment for oil, its dominant position as the world’s reserve currency was assured, and America could borrow and spend whatever it wanted without fear of flooding the globe with excess dollars. The supremacy of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency ensured that America could dominate the world economically and politically, and could raise the necessary amount of cash through borrowings to fund (among other things) the military, making it the most formidable military power on earth.

U.S. fiscal discipline during the ’80s and ’90s was lax, but it was nothing compared to what was to take place under the current administration, which has embarked on the largest borrowing spree in the nation’s history. America began to experience larger and larger current account deficits as it spent billions more every month on goods and services than it sold abroad. During 2005, the current trade deficit increased to an annualized $800 billion! Total U.S. outstanding debt now exceeds a staggering $8 trillion dollars, of which a large majority is owed to foreigners.

This staggering mountain of debt poses one of the greatest threats to the economic survival of the United States if circumstances were to arise wherein the dollar was not the only currency that nations could use to pay for their oil. If nations suddenly had a choice as to whether to pay for oil in euros rather than dollars, the supremacy of the American dollar would be seriously threatened, along with its economic viability.

The primary risk for America, should this option become available, would manifest itself in reduced demand for dollars on the global foreign exchange markets, as nations would require fewer and fewer dollars to pay for their oil. Reduced demand for any item implies a lower price down the road, and this dynamic would doubtless result in a depreciating dollar relative to other global currencies. Foreign central banks, needing more euros to buy oil, would seek to denominate ever increasing amounts of their foreign currency reserves in non-dollar currencies.

This in turn would mean that America would find it increasingly more difficult to borrow the $3 billion dollars a day it must have to keep the U.S. economy afloat, pay the interest on $8 trillion dollars in debt, as well as continue to fund its enormous continuing deficit.

Why Did America Really Invade Iraq?

The stated reason by the Bush Administration for invading Iraq was that Saddam possessed weapons of mass destruction and was prepared to use them against Israel, Iraq’s other neighbors, and possibly America.1 There are some that believe that the real reasons why America invaded Iraq are found in events and policy development that happened before the invasion but which were never revealed to the American public. There are two such reasons suggested:

First, to ensure that the dollar remained unchallenged as the world’s reserve currency, so that the U.S. could continue to fund its massive deficits and sustain its economy and its political and military supremacy. What does the dollar have to do with all of this and how does the invasion of Iraq fit into the picture?

It seems that Saddam sealed his fate in September 2000, when he demanded that all Iraqi oil sold under the U.N. Oil for Food Program must be paid for in euros rather than dollars. Saddam’s actions were a direct threat to the supremacy of the U.S. dollar as the world’s reserve currency and the ability of the U.S. to continue to fund its massive deficits. This is born out by the fact that two months after the U.S. invaded Iraq, the Oil for Food program was terminated and all of the Iraqi euro accounts were switched back to dollars. No longer did the world have the option of buying oil from Iraq and paying for it in euros.

Forcing the Iraqi accounts to convert from euros to dollars cost the Iraqis a great deal of money because the dollar had fallen in value relative to the Euro by some 13%! Not surprisingly, this detail has never been prominently mentioned by the five U.S. major media conglomerates who control 90% of information flow in the U.S., but confirmation of this vital fact provides insight into one of the crucial - yet overlooked - rationales for the 2003 Iraq war.

The second possible reason for the Iraq war is hinted at in a 1999 speech given by Dick Cheney while he was still CEO of Halliburton:

By some estimates, there will be an average of two-percent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead, along with, conservatively, a three-percent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional 50 million barrels a day.2

If the Vice President of the United States truly believed, as he stated before becoming Vice President, that world oil production was about to peak and go into decline, would this be sufficient motivation for the U.S. to ensure its economic survival by sending its military to Iraq in order to secure control over the second-largest oil and gas reserves on earth?

Who Opposed the War and Why?

The nations who vehemently opposed the war in Iraq were Russia, Germany, France, and China. The real underlying reason was never spoken of by the press or by the Administration. The reason all these nations opposed the war was because they all had contracts to purchase and develop Iraq’s vast oil and gas reserves. American and British oil giants were excluded by Saddam and left out in the cold. It is significant that, after the U.S. conquered Iraq, most of these contracts and agreements with France, Germany, Russia, and China were cancelled and given to U.S. and British Oil companies. To the victor go the spoils.

Saddam had begun the process of excluding American and British oil and gas corporations from acquiring stakes in Iraq’s bountiful hydrocarbons in the spring of 1997. Relief to Iraqis and restored confidence in the durability of the Saddam regime by the international community had already begun to occur after the UN’s Oil for Food scheme was introduced the previous December.

A consortium of Russian companies, led by the state-owned Lukoil, took a 75 percent share (with the state-owned Iraq National Oil Company taking 25 percent) in a joint corporation to develop the West Qurna oil field in southern Iraq. This oil field holds 11 billion barrels of oil - a third of the total U.S. oil reserves. Then, China National Petroleum Corporation entered the scene and entered into an agreement to develop the Adhab oil field.

China’s lead was followed by Total Societe Anonyme of France (now TotalFinaElf), which agreed to develop Nahr Omar oil field in the south - almost as bountiful a field as the West Qurna. Then Ranger Oil of Canada secured a $250 million contract for field development and exploration in the Western Desert, followed by India’s Oil & Natural Gas Corporation and Reliance Petroleum’s signing of a deal to develop the Tuba oil field.3

Without exception, almost all of the above contracts to develop, transport, and purchase Iraq’s oil were cancelled and declared null and void by the Bush Administration after the war was over. These same contracts were then awarded to British and American oil giants. It is readily apparent that securing control over the development, sale, transportation, and distribution of these oil and gas reserves for America and Britain was undoubtedly one of the primary reasons for the war in Iraq. This was undoubtedly grounded in the recognition that world oil production would peak sometime between 2006 and 2010.

In July 2003, two major oil companies agreed to buy 10 million barrels of Iraqi oil under the first long-term contracts to be offered by Iraq since the end of the war. BP, PLC and Royal Dutch/Shell Group of Cos. each had announced that they expected to ship two million barrels of Basra Light crude per month, starting in August and ending in December. They would load the oil on tankers at Iraq’s Persian Gulf export terminal of Mina al-Bakr. This was a reward for British participation in the invasion and conquering of Iraq.

U.S. Executive Order #13303

The veracity of these actions appear confirmed by executive order. In May 2003, President George Bush issued Executive Order #13303, which stated:

Any attachment, judgment, decree, lien, execution, garnishment, or other judicial process is prohibited, and shall be deemed null and void with respect to all Iraqi petroleum and petroleum products and interests therein.

With this executive order the President granted American oil companies, or individuals who are involved in the production, transportation, or distribution of Iraqi oil, a lifetime exemption from any kind of legal action against them in the United States.

''In other words, if Exxon-Mobil or Chevron-Texaco touch Iraqi oil, anything they or anyone else does with it is immune from legal proceedings in the U.S.,'' explained Jim Vallette, an analyst with the Sustainable Energy & Economy Network of the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington D.C.

This action made it impossible for any of the nations who had their contracts nullified by the President to sue to reinstate them because the oil companies to whom they were given are immune from any judicial proceeding against them in the United States! ''Effectively, Bush has unilaterally declared Iraqi oil to be the unassailable province of U.S. and British oil corporations,'' Vallette added.

We can more often judge the true motives of nations and leaders not by what they say, but by what they do. Their actions reveal their true motives, not what they say for public consumption.

The Lifeblood of the American Economy

Oil is the lifeblood of the American economy. The U.S. has approximately 5% of the world’s population but consumes over 20% or more of the world’s daily oil production. What will be the consequences if we are rapidly approaching the time when world oil production peaks and the price of oil continues to skyrocket, choking off economic activity and creating massive unemployment?

With nations like China and India growing exponentially, the demand for oil cannot go anywhere but up. Where will the oil production come from to meet the demand of two nations that possess 2.4 billion people, as they seek to purchase new cars, trucks, tractors, and all of the other products that are petroleum based? Continuously increasing oil prices could at some point cause the U.S. economy to shrink to unimaginable levels. Almost everything we use today in our modern life has petroleum as its base: from plastics to fertilizer to gas for your car - they all utilize petroleum as their base. Food production is almost totally dependent upon fuel and fertilizers that are petroleum based.

Is the world really approaching a time when the price of oil will force the price of food to levels unknown in modern history?

And I heard something like a voice in the center of the four living creatures saying, ''A quart of wheat for a denarius (a days wages), and three quarts of barley for a denarius; and do not damage the oil and the wine.'' - Revelation 6:6

The IOB (Iranian Oil Bourse) could accelerate the already existent global trend of shifting foreign currency reserves from dollars to euros. ''Countries could begin the process of switching to euro reserves from dollar reserves and this could bring down the value of the U.S. currency. Imports would start to cost Americans a lot more. As countries and businesses convert their dollar assets into euro assets, the U.S. property bubble would, without doubt, burst.''4

If oil trades in euros, it is only a matter of time before wheat, soybeans, natural gas, gold, silver, copper, and all of the other major commodities will come to be traded in euros as well. Nations want to protect their own interests, and no nation wants to have its reserves denominated in a currency that is depreciating, but rather in one that is appreciating, or is at least stable.

As nations begin to choose the euro over the dollar, the U.S. Treasury’s ability to finance the U.S. deficit and pay the interest expense on $8 trillion dollars will become increasingly more difficult. We will be forced to make some very hard choices in order to preserve our economy. Among the possibilities are: substantially raising taxes, making major cuts in spending in all areas (including the military), raising interest rates to whatever levels it takes to enable the U.S. Treasury to continue to fund the deficit, or simply by just printing money to fund the deficit, leading to sustained and possible hyperinflation.

These coming events could portend horrific economic consequences for the U.S. economy and for the lifestyle we have come to know and expect.

If this scenario begins to unfold, individuals who have excessive mortgage and credit card debt, or who have loans - personal or business - that float with the prime rate, will have to pay ever increasing interest rates, which at some point leads to massive defaults and bankruptcies. It appears that there could be substantial economic dislocations in America, probably leading to unemployment levels unknown in modern times, which would undoubtedly bring on severe financial distress for millions of Americans. The lifestyle we have enjoyed and have become accustomed to could change dramatically in the coming years.

The Missing Report Card

There is a new Chairman of the Federal Reserve System - regarded by many as the most powerful non-elected official in the world: Ben Benanke. (Under Greenspan’s 18-year tenure, the U.S. dollar’s value was cut in half.) It will be important to watch how he deals with the forthcoming debt dilemmas.

Until 1971 the Federal Reserve System, also known as ''the Fed,'' defined the money supply as equal to the sum of currency in circulation (excluding bank vault cash) and demand deposits (checking accounts). This definition of the money supply ignored saving accounts and time deposits (accounts that earned interest but could not be withdrawn without penalty until they matured). Monetary authorities and economists became concerned that estimates of monetary growth could be misleading if those estimates ignored savings accounts and time deposits.

In 1971 the Federal Reserve began publishing measures of broader monetary supplies. The monetary aggregates were given the names M1, M2, and M3. M1 was comparable to the original money supply measure - that is, currency in circulation and demand deposits. M2 equaled M1 plus accounts such as savings accounts and small time deposits. M3 was an even broader measure, adding in larger time deposits. M3 is, in effect, a primary report card on the Fed and the control of inflation.

However, effective March 23, 2006, the M3 will now no longer be reported!

It is also significant to note that turnover has been continuing at the top posts of the Federal Reserve: Fed Vice Chairman, Roger Ferguson unexpectedly announced he was stepping down. This on the heels of the resignation of the Philadelphia Fed Regional Bank President Anthony Santomero, which followed resignations of two of the seven Fed Governor spots and six of the twelve Fed Regional Bank President posts over the preceding two years.

What do they see coming?

One World Currency

How could America, and the nations of the world, lose their sovereignty without a shot being fired? Can you imagine the panic that will take place in the markets of the world if the dollar crashes? With 70% of the worlds reserves held in dollars, nations may watch helplessly as their currency reserves evaporate as the value of the dollar plummets. Realize that the U.S. is now the world’s largest debtor. And the Bible cautions us, ''The borrower is servant to the lender.''5

One solution to the forthcoming ''dollar crisis'' could be the creation of a ''one world currency,'' prophesied in the Bible. The leaders of the world will seek to establish a one-world currency. (Already we hear talk, in the hallways of the Bank of International Settlements, of an ''Amero,'' a unified currency for North America.)

To move toward a one-world currency, the world leaders would create and empower a world governing body that would have control over the creation, supply, and distribution of money worldwide. When a nation gives up its control over the printing of its money to someone else, it gives up its sovereignty (e.g., to the Fourth Kingdom described in the book of Daniel?).

The fourth beast shall be the fourth kingdom upon earth, which shall be diverse from all kingdoms, and shall devour the whole earth, and shall tread it down, and break it in pieces. - Daniel 7:23

There will be exciting times ahead! But we need to be diligent and very disciplined in regards to our personal stewardship. This topic is discussed in our recent briefing package, The Kings of the East, available this month on DVD as well as audio formats. See here for details.